Philip Stead

A portrait of my son-in-law at his wedding to my daughter. I took a few liberties with his suit and he isn’t normally armed. For those of you who might be interested the sword is based on a Court Sword in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York. In this particular case the sword is a little larger because I’ve drawn it as if it were designed for use.

A court sword is made to be worn at court and is often more decorative than useful. At first of course they were simply swords and were worn by the owners because they would feel uncomfortable without it, and they would also be obligated to defend the king if need be so the sword would be a requirement. The sword is drawn as a Rapier which means it would be quite long and there is a matching dagger because sword fighting styles of that time often used a weapon in each hand. Notice that the Pas D’ane are quite large so it could be used comfortably with gloves.